Cancer - Beyond the age of times
- Hey, Renzo, Guess what?
- My tinfoil hat friend! What?
- Cancer is a modern pathology created by mankind, it never existed before!
- OMG dude, my stupid-o-meter just went off the charts! But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt... where did you get that idea from?
- I don't quite remember, but it was a webpage with black background, white font, 90% of the text was written in caps and there was a lot of "believe" and "truth" written all over the place.
- Then, I'm sorry to tell you this but... NOPE.
Internet is a huge and abundant silo full of misconceptions, misunderstandings, misinterpretations and aphasic authors that cherish spreading retarded ideas without taking some time to actually verifying them.
Some of those ideas actually lead other people into believing them, and making awful choices in life that can compromise people's lives!
Yet, there's a particular kind of despicable character I want to highlight today: The ones that actually START conspiracy theories scaring the shit out of Cancer patients attempting to sell their shitty o̶v̶e̶r̶p̶r̶i̶z̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶e̶a̶ homeopathic products.
Of course, how can you sell a product that does not work if it isn't with lies?
Here, as a side note, I'd like to remark that anyone even considering that kind of advise proves that Darwin was not "so" wrong after all.
A recurring "resource" they appeal to is the idea stating that Cancer is a modern invention, a disease created by mankind.
So, today, we will talk about this bullshit.
First things first, "Cancer" is a generic name used to define over 200 diseases that provoke the uncontrolled reproduction of the cells affected (I'd love to have an oncologist deepening that for me in an article, please, feel free to advertise it at the comments section).
The cells we are made of are not immortal, therefore they have to reproduce through mitosis at a constant rate to keep our organisms... well... existing. Mitosis is the process where a cell makes a copy of itself, as you may see in this video:
To divide, a cell needs to make a copy of its DNA. The problem arrives when for any reason that information that need to be copied becomes damaged, then the instructions that DNA contain become corrupt, damaged or incomplete. In some cases, that misinterpretation of data leads into a cell reproducing at an insane rate, forming tumors.
Curiously, the factor that has more influence in this date failure is... AGE: as years pass by, our cells lose their capacity to copy their genetic material as they should. In the end, the more times a cell divided previously in its cycle, the more chances it has of having a "copy failure".
This is why Cancer risk is high after the 50 or 60 years of age in people.
Basically. Cancer is not an exclusive pathology that attacks only humans, because wherever there's living cells, there's a potential Cancer.
- Yeah, right... How much do pharmaceutic companies pay you for saying that?
- A very clever, yet useless, fallacy... My tinfoilhat friend.
The first reference I know of appears in an Egyptian Papyrus that has over 3500 years of age! it is describes 48 cases of wounds, fractures, dislocations and... tumors. It is not a crazy fact, considering how much did Egyptians loved to play around with dead people's guts.
Later, the Greek learned how to diagnose several different kinds of Cancer, and even identify benign and malignant tumors. Hippocrates named it, referring to it with the word carcinos, that means crab because of the appearance veins had in some tumors.
We even have older cases of Cancer, where mummies were found to be having tumors in them... But weren't recognized as they were alive. This includes a case of breast Cancer.
-Ok, ok... There was cases of Cancer in the past. But all these are rather "recent" cases of Cancer, when we already had modified the environment around us... Not when we lived in happy harmony with nature and the planet. When we did: Cancer did not EXIST!!!
- You're wrong again, friend.
Even when we lived in "harmony" with nature we were likely to get this. As a matter of fact, the most ancient case of Cancer I know of is the one found in the ribs of an individual... 120000 years ago.
I will not argue that Cancer was not as frequent as today. Because we know that today IT IS! We live longer, we survive longer and we DETECT it faster. We, also, do expose ourselves to things that did not exist in the past and trigger Cancer.
- Ok, it is not a modern thing... But it looks like you're saying that it was invented by humans!
- Nope.
Cancer affects animals, not only today, but millions of years ago too! (and I'm leaving plants out of this, for the sake of article length).
- I'm sorry, my tinfoilhat friend, Cancer is nothing new. But keep on posting shit on Internet to take the people like you to the grave. I do hope, as you hit 90 years of age and get Cancer, that you don't take your "magic tea" as medicine.
I would like to add that even in young people, it is very common that there are "copying errors" in the process of mitosis. Is an extremely delicate and complex process subject to failures as everything in the natural world.
The organism for this has certain "emergency" mechanisms to prevent defective genetic material from being reproduced, or even repaired if possible. Roughly, I can mention ras family genes, TGF-beta pathway suppressor proteins, wnt pathway components, and the p53 gene; Very famous the latter, by the way. One could also mention the cellular immunity, represented by CD8 and NK T lymphocytes, which play an important role in the destruction of defective cells (this explains the special tendency of people with AIDS to develop neplasias). Anyway, mistakes can occur, the problem is that if the quality control points of the organism are defective, this genetic material will not be destroyed before it can reproduce.
I also want to make mention of the fact that, while science is certainly not afraid to be questioned - it is the basis of the scientific method - to do so, very well grounded arguments are needed. I would not deny that the cancer moves a multimillion-dollar industry of transnational pharmaceuticals and also many antineoplastic treatment protocols are being modified today thanks to scientific advances, but if anything is certain, we are still far from being able to find a definitive solution. Our only hope is to completely master genetic engineering and nanotechnology.
Needless to say, every human being is a biopsychosocial being, so to focus merely on the biological, as was done in the beginnings of modern medicine, is a mistake, but this should not blind us, it should not make us fall into mystification.
Sounds like your "tinfoil hat friend" has been reading my FICTION story about cancer. There was a huge outbreak in colonial times particularly in the tropical colonies brought on mostly by consumption of refined sugar. I think one of the things that makes it more prevalent than in earlier times is the advent of processed foods. BUT- you're absolutely right, cancer has probably been here as long as there have been people to catch it!
That, among random internet blog shit, for sure.
upvote and applause. :)
Thank you very much! I Appreciate it :D
Great post. Cancer has been around this planet since the dinosaurs. In fact last year, a dinosaur fossil was discovered with two tumors in its vertebra! It only seems that cancer is more common these days because we have gotten MUCH better at detecting and diagnosing it!
We got so good at it, we are finding fossilized tumors nearly every month... even in fossils that have a long time above the dirt!
What is newish is that we know much more about cancer than centuries ago. And we are making progress in treating it!
Our curve of knowledge grows at exponential rates. Funny thing to note that, it is never over!
Yes we need to be careful and not fall for those so called cancer cures. It's a shame that those desperate people are being taken advantage of.